SA80s, woollie pullies, DPM camo and Saxon... Cold War classics! I miss those days

He didn't mention the forward assist or the fact that the SA80 provided hours of entertainment if you dropped it, lego bricks came to mind!

Back when the Regular Army was over 150k people

Man back when we had a proper armed forces that people could be proud of instead of it being a ghost of itself

My left ear enjoys this film.

SA80 easier to use and more dependable than an SLR, almost pissed myself laughing.

As usual I see the defence college predicted the future wars spot on!

And 5 years later the Berlin wall came down and in 1991 the USSR disintegrated lol.

I started laughing literally uncontrollably when the SA80 was first up. “Accurate, reliable.” Yep I wasn’t disappointed! Also claiming that 5.56 is better than 7.62 within 800 yards. Lol

Ah back in the day when the army could just about staff 1 BR Corps. These days they will be lucky to staff 1 BR troop.

We trialed split hair pin on ex lion-heart and several other big exercises. The concept was simple but hard work.  12 foot trench for 2 men ( 6 foot fire trench 6 foot shelter), 24 foot trench for 4 men etc. All the split hairpin pickets, wire etc was carried on the 432, which was impractical and not  easy to stow.

On lion heart we returned to our trench positions to recover the split hair pin etc and the whole companies tin had been pinched by the local German population.

Bloody hell, this is a jog down memory lane indeed.
When I joined in 95, all this kit was still relevant.
Except I'm sure the LAW was 94 and not 80, heavy fkr indeed.
The crow cannon 😂 my 1st gat once I got to Bn, 2 years I had that for ffs.

Carly G. Anti tank, but a much better trench clearer.

That merlin guided mortar is a nice idea, a bit like a simpler javelin missile. Saturate the target area, perfect for massed armour. Probably up the khazi cos of the cost or they couldnt get it accurate enough with 80s tech...

The rarden 30 mm was brilliant

I'd never heard about the Merlin guided mortar round project. I assume it never came to anything or it would be more well known. THe British army are great at coming up with ideas for good kit and then totally failing to make it work or putting the money up to buy it!

Agghhhh , some FRESH Mike Golf !

Trenches without Kip sheets to do overhead protection.

"The underlying assumptions are that our defence requirements will remain largely unchanged into the next century. Specifically, [...] the Warsaw Pact will remain the most prominent threat to Britain." 🤔

If only we knew then what  we knew now .......!